A kernel for Dapper and Etch [LWN.net]

A kernel for Dapper and Etch

Posted May 12, 2006 20:24 UTC (Fri) by hein.zelle (guest, #33324)
Parent article: A kernel for Dapper and Etch

Is Dapper going to have a realistic chance of remaining secure (kernel-wise) for 5 years with one kernel? That seems like a very long time to maintain security fixes on a single kernel release. Wouldn't it be less work to release "security" updates including a kernel upgrade to 2.6.16 or up at some point in the future? I realize that might be a nightmare as well for a stable distribution given that some hardware or software might no longer work with the new kernel. It does seem like a more viable solution to me though, at first sight.

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A kernel for Dapper and Etch

Posted May 13, 2006 10:01 UTC (Sat) by cjwatson (subscriber, #7322) [Link]

At present, we (the Ubuntu core team) don't think upgrading to 2.6.16 is viable; it requires at least a corresponding udev change and may have as-yet-undiagnosed knock-on effects in other parts of the system. That requires a reasonably lengthy QA cycle and isn't something we can reasonably do either at this point in the release cycle or after release.

We've accepted the workload required to support 2.6.15 for five years. It certainly won't be an easy job - I don't think anyone pretends that it will be - but all that moving to 2.6.16 would do would be to defer the problems a bit. We'll see how it goes.